“Students see red over T closures”? Oh, shut up, you boo-boo, baby whiners.

I picked up a copy of Metro Boston the other day. You know, the free and easy newspaper for those with limited time/limited attention span. Out of sympathy for the news vendor hunkered down at the station, I almost bought a Boston Globe for my train trip back to Boston from Salem. But then I said, nah, just pick up a free Metro, and you’ll be able to read every word in it (including the ads looking for medical research subjects), complete both the easy and hard Sudokus, plus get a catnap in during that 25 minute train ride.

The front page headline screamed, Students see red over T closures, and the inside pages further picked up the story: Closures on the Red Line: ‘Tufts’ luck for students.

It seems that the transit authority is going to be doing some weekend track repairs, November through March, which will require them to run buses between Harvard Square and Alewife Station on Saturdays and Sundays.

From the reaction of Tufts students – who live near Davis Square, one of the impacted stops -  you’d think they’d just learned that the Tran Siberian Railway was shutting down, and they were going to have to walk barefoot between Vladivostok and Lake Baikal.

“Shocked,” “frustrated”, “wicked annoying.”

Shocked? Shocked! Shocked,I’m shocked…

Up until they came to Tufts, it’s likely that 90% of these kids lived in suburbs with no public transportation whatsoever, and now they’re up in arms about having to take a shuttle bus to get from Davis Square to Harvard Square? (A distance, by the way, of all of two completely walkable miles.)

“That sucks,” said [name redacted to spare ninny further embarrassment], “I have friends [in the city], it’ll be almost impossible to get out there and see them.”

So true, [ninny with name redacted]. Getting into Boston from Medford if you have to take a shuttle bus for a couple of miles, rather than just hop on rapid transit, is nigh until impossible. Think scaling El Capitan blindfold.

Ah, yes, trapped on campus with no way out. Maybe you could just stay in Davis Square, where, last time I looked – which was in September – there was plenty to do. Maybe Mummy and Daddy can drive in every weekend and chauffer you to and fro. Maybe you can just stay home and txt your friends in faraway places.

[Ninny with name redacted] wasn’t the only Tufts Jumbo perturbed by the Red Line’s completely thoughtless and wretched decision to do this work on weekends, when it’s an inconvenience to students, vs. during the work week when it’s an inconvenience to people who work. (I was going to say ‘tax paying adults’ but that would sound just a tad too Tea Party-esque.)

There’s also a quote from [second ninny with name redacted].

While [second ninny with name redacted] will not let having to travel on a heinous shuttle bus keep him sequestered on the Tufts campus, he predicts that it will be “a huge pain.”

More ominously, he added:

“I can’t see this working out very well.”

I can see where you’re coming from, [second ninny with name redacted]. This temporary replacement of rapid transit with a shuttle bus does have all the hallmarks of a potential Hindenburg disaster, maybe even the Titanic. As I’ll find out for myself when I try to get to a play that I’m planning on seeing in Davis Square in December. Maybe I should leave now?

Anyway, I think that [ninny with name redacted] and [second ninny with name redacted] might be able to team up and have Mummy and Daddy come in every other week. It could be like the kindergarten car pool days. What fun!

At least [second ninny with name redacted] did indicate that he was willing to work through the “huge pain” and continue to make his way into Cambridge and Boston.

Unlike [third ninny with name redacted]:

“I doubt I’ll be taking public transportation anymore,” she said. “I don’t want to have to deal with crowded buses and traffic congestion. It’s too bad.”

Well, [third ninny with name redacted], I just want to point out to you that, on weekends, the subways can be very crowded, so the buses won’t be all that different. And there’s not a lot of traffic congestion between Davis and Harvard Squares on weekends, either. IMHO.

But if you want to punish public transportation by not taking it, well, knock yourself out!

To their credit, the Tufts student newspaper acknowledged that upgrading the tracks was not a bad thing, even though they decried that the announcement of the weekend T closures gave only two weeks notice. (Just how much advance notice does one need? Certainly, if you have a day or two in advance you can adjust your schedule so that you leave a few minutes early to account for the fact that the buses will go a bit slower, and take a bit more time, than the T would. Maybe Tufts kids these days are so tightly scheduled that we require this info months in advance. I see an iPhone app coming up…)

Meanwhile, assuming that they are able to come to closure with the closures, [ninny with name redacted], [second ninny with name redacted], and [third ninny with name redacted] will certainly have stories to tell their children and grandchildren. Tales of the Great Red Line Station Closures of The Winter of 2011-2112, when for five entire months they had to – get this – take a shuttle bus between Davis and Harvard Square.

Kids these days, I’m quite sure the ninnies will be telling their children and grandchildren, they have it so darned easy.

Oh, the humanity!